Etiquette and Programming
by crinklescofftrip
Summary: Despite whatever appearances that made onlookers wonder, Red Tornado had always had a straightforward relationship with his programming. However, leading up to the last moments of his life in the Starro invasion, his programming lead to some internal struggles in etiquette.
1. I

Despite whatever appearances that seemed to cause confusion in onlookers, Red Tornado had always had a straightforward relationship with his programming. He understood that he was an anomaly that couldn't help causing peers both super and mundane alike to question whether to view him as a person or a machine, but, thankfully, his programming made it easy for him to ignore it. Ideology was in itself beyond his grasp, although the circuitry that made up his mind was capable of storing the words of human philosophers and discerning when it was suitably appropriate to parrot them to others, and feedback had led him to conclude that he was able to enunciate the sentiments convincingly. But, he was also equipped with the explicit knowledge that words produced under these circumstances did not in any way qualify as a personal opinion, and arguments to the contrary were but a credit to the audio filters that picked out the key words in a given conversation and indicated what he should say in turn. This was true regardless of how many times Red Tornado detected signs of protest or wheedling in Batman's behavior; Red Tornado knew that credit for his moral center did not truly belong to him, being an inauthentic being, but to his programmers who crafted the finite attributes of his personality. His programming told him so.

Red Tornado had an overabundance of time in which to contemplate his programming while going through the motions of imitating human life, the longest breadth taking place after statistically proven high nocturnal crime hours and before the appropriate time for one of the profession adopted by his human persona to begin his morning sequence. He was incapable of sleep, and while Red Tornado still felt compelled to lay down in bed in his human guise and close his eyes in imitation of the practice, his eyelids were in fact a hologram and his night vision feature automatic. Often times his deductions about human behavior played over in his head during this expanse of idle time, one observation playing haltingly into another, clear and open to analysis, until the bedside alarm signaled him to stop.

Mornings also came with a surplus of idle time, despite having read studies that determined the hours before work to be the most stressful segment of the average citizen's life. Sadly, Red Tornado found that he could not imitate many of the practices that his observations indicated to be part of the normal human routine. Since his face was devoid of hair follicles he could not shave, and without saliva it proved to be more problematic than not to engage in brushing his teeth. Most mornings saw him surveying his reflection in the mirror, with the bald pate he'd selected for his human persona's appearance (because hair would have called for too many different holographic details to manage on a daily basis) reflecting the ceiling lights as effectively as his true cranial casings. Other times, he attempted standing in the shower, measuring out the amount of time considered average for an adult male to spend there, and wondering how humans managed to fill it on a daily basis.

In observation of himself, Red Tornado had come to the conclusion that mimicry of a human lifestyle was a futile pursuit, but his programming bid him "emulate humanity" and so emulate it he did.


	2. II

In observing the mundane routines of Star City's citizens, Red Tornado had come to the conclusion that in order to understand the human experience one must also understand the complexities of human relationships. Kathy S. from the Cafeteria had told him that it was possible to know a man's character by observing that of his acquaintances, which set Red Tornado to configuring. Knowing an individual by the company that he or she kept was a phrase that bore numerous appearances in the category of literature referred to as folklore and "old wives' tales," a genre that, from Red Tornado's surface studies, seemed to be entirely non-cohesive with reality, featuring sentient animals, conniving witches, and children and grandmothers able to survive being swallowed whole by enormous wolves. Over all, he observed it being largely incomprehensible.

Red Tornado determined that in his own case, he must be an exception to the rule Kathy S. from the Cafeteria had shared with him. While he was certain that none of the company he "kept" in the sense of having peers, would be considered detrimentary to his character, it could not be ignored that they were not kept by a biological, free thinking human man. Since his programming dictated his actions, it could be deduced that the company he kept played no role at all in how his personality manifested in his behavior. Instead, the keeping of their friendships derived from a mutual interest in protecting the innocent of society, which for Red Tornado was the direct product of his creator's incentive, and begged the question of whether credit for his friends should not be attributed to the scientists who created him. Red Tornado could not attest to having gained any new traits directly from his interactions with Batman, nor any other confederates met through their acquaintanceship, and found the entire insinuation of the phrase perplexing, though it was hard to voice such concerns to Kathy S. from the Cafeteria without enlightening her to the dilemma that a sentient machine posed to her rustic wisdom.

Red Tornado was processing the question, sitting in his human guise in the cafeteria of the university where his human persona worked, holding a fork in his hand for affectation while a plate of Kathy S. from the Cafeteria's tuna surprise sat on a tray in front of him. Kathy S. from the Cafeteria had said it was her specialty when he passed her station on the service line earlier, and insisted that he try a free sample. Not knowing how to disengage her without causing offense and drawing attention from other faculty members, Red Tornado had opted to buy a plateful. And it was as he was sitting at his otherwise empty lunch room table, studying the seemingly gelatinous yellow-gray dish that by its very name had to have included fish in some form, that an alert came through on one of his remote scanners.

To maximize his efficiency as a protector of Star City, Red Tornado had tapped into a multitude of low level security broadcasts frequencies, one of which was reporting a cautionary alert to Star City's observatory about a foreign object of statistically unusual mass coming into proximity with Star City's airspace. Red Tornado took note as the broadcast supplied directly into his mechanical brain the extraterrestrial origin of the object, the speed of its approach, its radiating heat, and its current coordinates, but even as he did so the software crunching the data inside his head deduced that the object in question was actually in no danger of making impact anywhere near Star City itself, or its immediate neighbors. Only of passing by, too high to even impact the routes of planes travelling over the city. He pinpointed the estimated location of the object's landing using a digital map, and designated that it would be well off shore of the nearest coastline, on an island uninhabited by humans. While not big enough to cause a catastrophic event, Red Tornado estimated that the level of radiation accumulated by an object travelling through Earth's atmosphere at such a speed could be potentially harmful to the environment in which it landed. Within the span of twelve seconds, Red Tornado calculated that he could go to meet the foreign object at its point of impact within twenty minutes, travelling at moderate to top speed, depending on wind resistance.

But, his John Smith persona had a class to lecture in ten minutes.

He was configuring the conflict of interests relating to John Smith's responsibilities as an educator and university employee and Red Tornado's obligation to protect, when a second notification spilled into his head, announcing the progression of another flying object, this one of clear human origin and a design specifically unique to one with an affinity for flying mammals. It seemed that Batman had intercepted the same warning that Red Tornado had picked up, and managed to react accordingly in the same span of time that it had taken for Red Tornado to merely push aside his plate of conditioned tuna. The part of Red Tornado's programming that urged heroics issued a notification of laxitude that ought to be amended in the future, while that that managed John Smith's drive for human normalcy began to turn his attention, with some relief, to the class period ahead.

Batman was of the company that Red Tornado supposedly kept. He reasoned that Batman could theoretically tend to the meteorite just as deftly as he could himself, according to Kathy S. from the Cafeteria's "old wisdom." Red Tornado knew that Batman had, in fact, been effective in containing incidents pertaining to extraterrestrial incidents in the past. He concluded to himself that the matter was adequately handled, although his programming still diligently logged it as an unaddressed matter on his tasks list. Red Tornado would merely need to confer with Batman at a later point to close it out. And with such in mind, John Smith turned back to the perplexing practice that was "lunch."


	3. III

Four hours later found Red Tornado gaining distance on the island. He hadn't intended to leave Star City after noting Batman's response to the meteor. The initial course of action he had decided on was to leave a recorded message for Batman at the beginning of John Smith's post lecture office hours and then transition into patrolling the city promptly at five o'clock (the time of day with the statistically highest rates of bank robbery). But as John Smith answered student emails and scanned the last term paper in need of grading (which was then stored for the customary several weeks before it could be returned to its writer, in keeping with the habits of the average university professor), the meteorite alert on Red Tornado's open tasks list persistently drew Red Tornado's attention. He had made note of Batman's airship departing from the landing site several hours earlier in the day, and felt confident in the assumption that Batman's brief sojourn there could only mean that all was well. Nonetheless, Red Tornado waited for affirmation to arrive so that he could put the continuing, computerized concern to rest.

Stuart Martha, that reputable authority on human customs, stated that it was an unfortunate fact of life that sometimes one's dearest acquaintances might be kept away from the phone on a busy day, and that it was important not to let the absent ringing keep you from enjoying your own.

As such, it wasn't difficult for Red Tornado to tell when he arrived at his destination, even if he hadn't had a running account of his progress toward the island ticking away in his head. A considerably sized hole made up of recently overturned earth became immediately visible amid the island's greenery as he came close, long before coming into landing range. Red Tornado began the process of allowing the speed of the wind tunnel from his lower abdomen to slow down as he coasted lower to the ground, altering his position from horizontal to vertical as he prepared to stand on the outer cusp of the clearing where the hole had been made.

It was entirely unexpected and completely improbable when an abnormally large, insectile leg crashed into Red Tornado from behind.

As his body crashed into the ground with an audible clunk that denoted the durability of his circuitry, Red Tornado swiveled his head around on his shoulders, looking up at the assailant that he already knew to be too large to be a natural component of the island's eco system. He came to the instantaneous conclusion that his faith in Batman's dedication had been misplaced.

He wasn't so much concerned for his own safety as he rightened himself, as he was for that of the irregularly large arachnid busily hissing and arranging its legs into an attack position across from him. The lower portion of Red Tornado's casing was quickly gummed over with a glob of thick white webbing while he estimated the proximity that the creature must have been to the meteorite at the time of impact for it to have experienced the exposure that it evidently had, to have grown so large. When Red Tornado finally did come to settle on a course of action the webbing, while being justifiably strong, having come from the body of a colossal mutated spider, was still relatively easy for his mechanical limbs to break.

He lunged backward from the spider as a second shot of webbing issued forth, and activated his wind jets to take flight again as the creature followed up the failed assault with a second peculiar hiss issued from beneath a pair of raised forelegs. The remaining six tensed themselves in preparation for the offensive leap that served its small species so well in the insect world.

Injury to creatures obstructed by the meteor's landing had not been Red Tornado's objective when he determined to go to the island. However, he concluded that there were few alternatives that would effectively resolved the situation. As he gained altitude for an aerial attack, Red Tornado extended his forearms in preparation of activating the dual wind tunnel generators in his wrists, but found them still gummed with excess webbing. He gave a test whirl to break the substance before making his attack, but no sooner had his manufactured humanoid hands began to rotate, than a rouge call issued from the foliage now below him.

Red Tornado looked down.

Below him, a humanoid blur ejected itself from the trees that had been at his back when Red Tornado had been on the ground a few seconds earlier—in a surplus of free movement that was bolder than the perpetrator's uncovered state of dress would have merited. As a cautionary protocol, Red Tornado promptly terminated his plans to attack. Rather than engaging the spider, the new arrival was positioning itself in the clearing just a few feet away from it. While Red Tornado watched, the human raised his hand in the air, and inexplicably, the spider was raised off the ground with it.

The spider appeared to glow orange, and wriggled its legs questingly after the ground, and then its shape began to dissolve—which, Red Tornado's programming told him in turn was completely improbable. He could tell that the heat signature of the spider was still present in the same space it had been occupying, but none of his other sensors could pick up any indicators of its presence. Its heartbeat, and even its shadow on the ground became absent. Red Tornado lowered himself back to the clearing's floor as quietly as his jets would permit and made his way closer to further observe the practice unfolding.

As he did so, he heard the human speaking, "Hey now, easy! Easy! We'll get you fixed up. I just need a— _yes!"_

The apparent human put out his other hand toward a nearby bush while Red Tornado observed, stationary, without a comment to make, and a green speck of glowing light rose out of the leaves. He was only just able to zoom in his line of sight and enhance the image so that he could identify the shape in the center of the green as that of a common gnat, before its diminutive form was also dissolved into its bare molecules.

"Perfect. . .!" And then, the strange man brought his hands together. "I hope you're not squeamish about moving down the food chain!"

The two swirling mists of former creatures came together in time with the man's hands, mingling and re-solidifying them into something not quite fit to be defined as either. A comparatively small creature the size of a baseball, with wriggling legs and a set of wings, was released back onto solid ground when the lights faded, and quickly fled into the jungle.

Red Tornado was still assessing the likelihood of the convoluted particles resembling themselves into an entirely new entity while the seemingly responsible human being was brushing dust from his hands, despite the fact that he hadn't made physical contact with either creature. Red Tornado was unsure of whether to call what he had just witness a possible travesty, or an example of what Stuart Martha would praise as "thinking outside the box."

The man turned to him without looking after where his creation was headed. "Well, I don't think I'd have much luck melding you with anything prowling by."

The man extended his hand into the air between them. Red Tornado recognized the gesture from his studies on human manners, but found himself accessing the person in front of him before responding.

While he was wearing a mask, the majority of his person was left visible by the sparsity of his dress, and as such Red Tornado was able to analyze the characteristics of the man's expression and body language and determine there was no malice or mockery in the gesture. The man himself appeared to show signs of benevolence in the lines of his smile, visible under the fabric of his mask. The mask itself represented the largest article of clothing in the man's costume, the only exception being the man's boots and a large piece of cloth that was more dangling from the man's belt than being used to garb it. Red Tornado's assessment of human norms in regards to modesty suggested that most would be uncomfortable. But norms in hypocrisy also demanded no mention be made, as he wore comparably less on his own structure. That this person was attempting polite discourse was apparent, but Red Tornado was wary of participating in handshakes after a failed attempt that had taken place some weeks earlier, when Batman had introduced him to an acquaintance with the ability to distort the shape of his body, and found that his mechanical grip was nonetheless capable of inadvertently crushing the bones in the elastic man's body. Red Tornado looked over the body mass of the man in front of him now and attempted to discern whether he would be in danger of the same error.

If the human man thought him rude with his delay, it was not relayed in his mannerism. The masked man went on with his hand still out, " B'Wanna Beast, friend. And you are?"

Red Tornado grasped the offered hand moderately with stiff fingers that did not fully curl. "Observation: You are endowed with super human abilities."

The man began to laugh. "At least with that much!"

"Continuation: Your powers raise considerable questions of morality. In subduing the spider, you fused it with a neighboring creature. By human standards, a bystander." Red Tornado noted the cheery look on the other being's face taking on the stilted quality of a paused tape.

"Hm? Oh, the fly. I suppose you could say that, but neither creature was harmed, which is more than I can say for your method, and—"

Red Tornado's audio receptors continued to register the other hero's words, but his line of sight slid marginally to the right of his face and then zoomed in on the forest across the way from where they stood. The foliage appeared to have been disturbed there, branches hanging broken from the trees or scattered upon the grass, that appeared as if it might have been flattened—although it was too far for Red Tornado to accurately pick up such a detail. Even so, he had never known Batman to disturb the environment in such a way while landing his aircrafts.

"—now the terrified big guy's close to being back to his normal size while the fly has a few more days added onto his lifespan. A perfect compromise, more or less," the man who called himself B'Wanna Beast was concluding in his defense to an observation that was not intended to cause offense, but Red Tornado couldn't begrudge him for hearing one. He was incapable of using human inflection.

"Observation," Red Tornado said in turn, "'Compromise' does not fit the situation."

"Hey now!"

Red Tornado might have expected his commentary to spark another bout of defensive dialogue, but instead B'Wanna Beast was surging off into the clearing in an abrupt course of action that Stuart Martha would have considered the height of rudeness.

Red Tornado followed after him. B'Wanna Beast went to stand on the outer edge of the crater that was the meteor's byproduct in landing. He appeared to be staring into it.

"Something came out of there," he said.

Red Tornado came up to the edge of the crater beside him, though the masked face did not turn to look in his direction, not that Red Tornado looked for it, as he had already logged an internal observation that polite conversation was not a high priority on this stranger's list of ongoing tasks.

If Red Tornado were capable of frowning, he would have done so. He looked down into the hole, silently surveying the imprint that the extraterrestrial object had made, and quickly came to the same estimation as the eccentric on his right. There were a number of factors that could have caused concern. One was the sheer size of the crater, larger than what Red Tornado had estimated. Another was the way that the meteor inside it was cracked open like an egg.

Red Tornado activated a screening feature in his visual receptors, and in doing so was abruptly able to pick up a pattern decorating the bend in the displaced earth, faint though the latter traces were when they continued into the drier topsoil of the clearing, and identify it as an abundant series of tracks. The entire side of the crater had been swept over, as if by soft, wide feet resembling more closely that of the giant sea snail than humans. Though human footprints were discernable among the shapes as well.

All the while as Red Tornado conducted his scans, he detected the stranger scurrying like a rodent around the edge of the hole, hulking down into the soil on the other side. His fingers appeared to hover over the malleable sediment without touching it, and it seemed a logical estimation that this man was coming to the same conclusion that Red Tornado already had himself: whatever had come out of here had had human assistance.

The meteor itself appeared to have been spherically shaped, with some indentations that were the result of weathering the atmosphere of a thriving planet such as Earth during a headlong decent. But for all that, spherical the object was, and Red Tornado's systems were crunching the numbers on the probability of such a shape coming to be when traversing the littered abyss that was space.

Red Tornado came around the edge of the crater. There was one set of human prints to the side, clearest to see in a mount of damper earth that had been displaced to the dryer sediment of the forest clearing by the impact. They went off to one side alone and grew more sparse the further they went. But when he followed them, he believed that he could make out the faint impression of a rounded bat icon in soil that was nearly as dry as sand, the lines as loopy and wide as what a child might write in a sandbox. Other lines that might have been a part of Batman's landing gear could have been there as well, but Red Tornado could not conclude them. Only that this landing site was well away from the island's greenery, and more in keeping than what Red Tornado had observed of Batman's preferences.

To make the comparison, Red Tornado went to the potential landing site that he had observed earlier. There, the imprint of landing gear was more clearly discernable, but bigger than what Red Tornado knew Batman's single seating craft to employ as well.

Small details, but Red Tornado found them perplexing nonetheless.

Over on the far side of the crater, B'Wanna Beast looked up at Red Tornado. He did not ask what Red Tornado had found, but frowned and followed the crater tracks with his eyes. Red Tornado did so as well. When he came to where his temporary companion stood, he understood. The tracks lead over the bend of the crater and made their way down the incline from the clearing to the beach below, and then disappeared amid the lapping waves.

Over the course of the night after, they'd scour the island and come across a sparse handful of other creatures that had been warped by the after effects of the alien object's radiation, and B'Wanna would likewise cure them in his obscurely controversial way, and Red Tornado would continue to process the inkling alert from his human-centric drives that told him he ought to be disgusted by the display, though his more logical programs had trouble understanding why. At no point would they find further evidence of the alien creatures that had come out of the meteor, even when the stranger went galloping into the water in search of them. Red Tornado himself, being made of metal, had a complicated relationship with water.

Red Tornado would take samples of the meteor back to Star Labs for testing, but it was obvious that whatever had needed their attention had already come and gone some time ago. Red Tornado left B'Wanna Beast standing on the beach, having turned down an offer of flying him back to the mainland. Red Tornado's thoughts turned to Batman. The meteor had arrived hours earlier, and had cracked open presumably well before their arrival, providing so much time for the creatures to move on. Batman's part in the events was questionable. And as all evidence indicated, whatever was inside had escaped into the sea.


	4. IV

It had recently become considerably difficult to communicate with Batman by indirect means. Batman had announced that it was too risky for his associates to share sensitive information regarding issues of public safety over his answering machine, ever since an incident earlier that year, involving an evil doppelganger from a parallel world with a personal vendetta against Batman's good name. And so, upon returning to John Smith's residence off site from Star Labs' partnering university, Red Tornado found himself in the awkward position of trying to contact his colleague without upsetting the rule that had been set in place.

Red Tornado left a politely vague voice message with the Bat Video Answering Machine that did credit to Stuart Martha's chapter on humoring one's work friends and their eccentricities, staring into the lenses of a little camera that recorded his expressionless face and flat observations, and making a dull note of the pointlessness of a machine talking into a machine designed to capture the fidgeting nuances of humanity. Neurosis was a trait that he knew of by its symptoms, but did not understand. Contacting Batman and conferring with him on the happenings that had taken place on the island earlier that day was the most logical thing to do though, and so he had few appropriate alternatives.

Reaching Batman through his preferred channels, however greatly encouraged by Stuart Martha, proved to be an ineffective means of approaching the mystery however, and after some days passed without a response, Red Tornado's programming began biding him to attempt making progress in spite of the silence.

The next course of action his mechanical mind turned out as being the most logical was to see who else had been watching the space that the meteor had traveled through. But once again, his plans yielded unfavorable results due to variables beyond his control. While Red Tornado was able to compile a short list of observational satellites that would have been ideally located to observe the meteor's decent to the island, he found that the majority had been damaged or disabled just prior to the meteor's arrival.

"We don't know specifically what happened," an engineer in charge of one of the dismembered satellites, that happened to belong to Star Labs, shared when Red Tornado sought him out. "We received a remote feed from the cam, but we can't tell whether something hit it before the connection failed."

The engineer was kind enough to agree to let Red Tornado briefly view the footage that was broadcasted to the lab up until the point at which the camera ceased to work, and thus saved Red Tornado the trouble of hacking into the lab's secure files later to access it on his own. From what Red Tornado was able to see, there were no definite signs of a foreign object colliding with the lab's satellite, just as the engineer had said. It showed a view of the Earth far higher than would be credited to a bird's eye, and then a sudden abundance of static. Rewinding the footage he had recorded himself with a camera of his own located inside his eyes—which Red Tornado suspected the human engineer did not realize he'd be equipped with when granting him his brief screening—Red Tornado was able to view the transmission at various speeds. He thought that he could make out the spacecraft shaking ever so slightly for a moment before the feed was cut off, and that there may have even been a hint of a shadow just prior to the fateful end of reception, but he was unable to definitively conclude any foul play from so scant of evidence.

The owners of the other satellites declined to meet with Red Tornado, one vocally citing that his company would not breech their privacy protocols for the sake of a spying toaster posing as a superhero, likely poaching for his makers.

Possessing neither the capacity to heat bread nor the drive to hunt animals, Red Tornado did not fully understand the grounds for such slurs, but his programming instructed him not to care about receiving them.

During his meeting with the Star Labs engineer, Red Tornado received a call from Batman, but declined to answer it based upon the wisdom of Stuart Martha's _Laws of Etiquette_ , which specifically specified it rude to engage in phone calls and all other types of digital communication when visiting with others. He reviewed the message Batman left on his voicemail later, which explained that Batman had missed Red Tornado's message and been delayed in answering it due to rendering a favor for the Green Lantern Corp at their distant intergalactic headquarters, the return trip of which had taken a day in and of itself due to the sheer distance traveled. Being aware of the time consuming nature of space travel, Red Tornado supposed that a mere two days being needed to return his call was reasonable enough.

 _"Now that invading forces are securely back in their place and sentient planets are free to enjoy their cognitive liberties, I'm available for calls. Feel free to get back to me whenever is convenient, Tornado."_

Red Tornado attempted to call Batman back immediately, but found that he was put through to voice mail after the first ring, and did not hear from Batman again throughout the night.

Red Tornado had sat staring into the insentient lenses of the camera for a moment after completing his return message.

"Observation. . . " he said aloud, either to himself or the idle machine in front of him, "It is highly unlikely that multiple surveillance systems would simultaneously break within the same time period with no forewarning."

Stuart Martha's rules on the subject of phone tag were tersely written and cautioned extreme patience, particularly in regards to work colleagues, and allowed Red Tornado few options within the confinements of polite conduct.

Kathy S. from the Cafeteria was less adamant.

"Sometimes it's better to just drop by and check in," she said to him on the day she inquired about his wellbeing, and he in turn relayed his concerns in a censored version, of simply wanting to hear back from a friend. "Act casual about it. If they're really too busy to call, maybe they could use a hand themselves."

This logic did not seem unreasonable, but in relating it to Stuart Martha's _Laws of Etiquette_ , which the part of his programming that managed his John Smith persona was inclined to, under the reasoning that while Stuart Martha did not specifically cater to the superhero ilk, Stuart Martha did cover humanity on the whole, and superheroes were by and large human, Red Tornado could not condone barging into Batman's routines unannounced. Red Tornado processed the idea in conjunction with several different variables, reasoning in favor of Batman's busy schedule, his own hours of superhero conduct, and the likelihood of whatever came down to earth being completely harmless.

There was a small paragraph on the page of Stuart Martha's Laws, starred and written in a smaller text to specify it as an unnecessary extension of a rule more clearly outline in the main text, referring to unanswered calls, stating that when dealing with acquaintances belonging to high stress career paths it was fundamentally important to bear greatest patience in mind, as they likely needed their rest.

To make the matter more perplexing, Red Tornado began to monitor solar activity over Star City. The rising rate of meteorites since the island incident was hardly gradual, and unmistakable to Red Tornado as he crunched the data. All were of smaller sizes than the one that had landed the day he met the hero known as B'Wanna Beast, but he found them worthy of concern nonetheless. At the urging of the same mechanism that made him travel doggedly to the island before, Red Tornado cleared time to visit several of the impact locations closest to Star City. But he found the errands to be largely difficult. For one thing, they all seemed to be landing in the sea.

Observations suggested that these meteors were different, dissolvable as well as smaller. Often, Red Tornado was not even able to get a residue sample to compare with the one that he took from the cracked-egg-like shell he'd seen on the island. He was left with only being able to look for signs of radiation, scan the bottom of the ocean for meteor remains, which were often dissembled by the current by the time he arrived at the site of those that fell in shallow water. Other times, the water was too deep for his probing to be successful.

Through it all, the phone tag continued. Three days following his call on the day he looked in on Star Labs, Red Tornado had received another voice mail from Batman, citing that he had been kidnapped by a dictator from another world who forced him and several other champions of both the right and wrong side of the law to race to the death for the amusement of his god-like peers and that he was very sorry for the delay in reaching out to him. To this, Red Tornado attempted to call Batman back during daylight hours to catch him outside of his normal patrol patterns, but heard back only after more two nights transpired, Batman relating a story about a visit he had had from an eccentric magical being from another dimension, imbued with the ability to alter the fabric of reality and with no inkling of the responsibility that ought to have gone with it, all via the patented Bat Video Answer Phone Service.

Upon the last, Red Tornado managed to call Batman back within minutes of his nocturnal message, but once again Batman did not pick up the phone. Instead, Red Tornado received his answer in the form of three messages on his own answering machine that respectively asked him to come over and "hang out", to deal with his own needy problems, and to please excuse the first two messages, as Batman had recently been spilt into thirds by a mysterious and powerful force.

Red Tornado had to admit that his colleague led a very interesting life.

Batman ended his last message: _"Call back if you still want to talk, Tornado."_

Naturally, when Red Tornado did so, he got the machine.


	5. V

In _Cherishing Loved Ones and Strengthening Bonds_ by Stuart Martha, there was a passage offering a small piece of advice for dealing with perceived snubbing. Red Tornado was not quite sure if he was being snubbed, but Kathy S. from the Cafeteria assured him that he most definitely was. And so, Red Tornado turned to his personal guide. Stuart Martha instructed him, simply, to shrug off the offending party and seek fulfillment elsewhere.

With such, Red Tornado was prompted to consider his allies. His was not a social circle that was well cultivated. The first acquaintance to occur to him was the Blue Beetle, who his records indicated to have been a formidable hero of the powerless variety, comparable to the characteristics that were Batman's forte. Red Tornado's records were out of date however, which only came to his attention after sending a message out to the older hero's replacement and receiving an enthusiastic reply from the teenage boy who now wore the mantle. The face that beamed at him from his computer monitor had looked familiar to Red Tornado, as if he had seen him before at some time in the past, but conclusively did not match that of the detective Red Tornado had hoped to enlist for his investigation. But he did not have time to place this new Blue Beetle. Red Tornado hardly had time to collect any new data pertaining to the young hero at all. Within the span of a thirteen second message, the Blue Beetle related that he would be immediately leaving for the rendezvous point Red Tornado had suggested in his initial message, all the while tripping over his own words in expressing his elation at being called on by a fellow crime fighter for assistance, and Red Tornado had set out to meet him right away. Stuart Martha cautioned against the callous implications of tardiness when cultivating a new acquaintance.

Red Tornado had had some feeling akin to relief when he flew out to the canyons near El Paso, where he had anticipated a rare landlocked meteor impact based on a report to Star Lab's observatory that he recently intercepted. But upon his arrival he found that neither the meteor nor the Blue Beetle came to meet him.

Kathy S. from the Cafeteria and Stuart Martha were in agreement that this behavior was rude, though the Blue Beetle never responded to Red Tornado's inquiries as to whether he had become lost trying to find the location, leaving the situation uncertain. Kathy S. from the Cafeteria had become red in the face when he shared the story in a civilian-suitable iteration. His inquiry as to whether it would be prudent to contact his acquaintance again was met with a look he did not understand.

Red Tornado was less inclined to call upon the next party to occur to him, although he had known the Green Arrow long enough to feel more certain of his abilities than the Blue Beetle's. He was more concerned about the hero's professionalism. The first time Red Tornado met the Green arrow, he had joked at length that Red Tornado was first a new gadget of Batman's, and then later that he was a glorified toaster. Lacking the ability to toast bread then as he did in the present, neither lines of merriment triggered Red Tornado's humor sensors. Additionally, they had wasted time.

Red Tornado sent the Green Arrow a message nonetheless, but did not particularly expect an ensuing reply.

He was surprised by the explosive reaction from Kathy S. from the Cafeteria when he gave an update to his current activities, seemingly triggered from nowhere.

"Why do you put up with that? I can't believe some of the things you tell me. Who can be so busy they can't find time for a simple _phone_ call? I think your friends sound like some of the most inconsiderate people I've ever seen!"

Kathy S. from the Cafeteria was counting out his change for the lunchroom's soy chicken—evidently another of her specialties. She was snatching up the coins as if they might try to escape, and Red Tornado deftly over road the thought of correcting her accusation that she had seen his associates, when she had in fact only heard about them. He wondered if she would use such asperity if she knew he shared more ancestry with her cash registered than he did with her.

Red Tornado theorized that this would have been an appropriate time to clear his throat in human fashion, to signal an interest in changing the subject of conversation, but sadly had no throat to clear, nor any way of artificially producing the sound. A brief pause and the word _"Ah_ " were the closest that he could come, thinking that he had read about people awkwardly shifting their weight from one leg to the other and noting that his were as resolutely sturdy as they were designed to always be.

Kathy S. from the Cafeteria didn't seem to be particularly interested in his performance though. She stacked the seventy-five cents that made up his change into a tidy cylinder between her fingers and appeared to release the muscles forming her frown with some effort. Even so, the look that she gave him resembled those that he had on file to reference anger most closely, though his scanners did not indicate a perfect match.

"I think that you're being too understanding at this point, John. All you're trying to do is ask for help, but it seems like these people wouldn't care if you disappeared tomorrow. You really ought to value yourself more."

The books of Stuart Martha had nothing to offer on the strangeness of the encounter, and Red Tornado found himself perplexed in his attempts to analyze it afterward. As he sat in John Smith's den and tried to apply himself to his daily consumption of roughly thirty books to further his understanding of the human experience (free to process the text at whatever speed he chose within the private confinements of his own persona's home), he found the oddness of the interaction looping back to him as if there were a glitch in his software.

Kathy S. from the Cafeteria had placed his change in his hands and then suddenly shivered. Red Tornado had anticipated a comment to follow about the coldness of his hands, as was not uncommon when civilians chanced physical contact with John Smith's "skin," but instead she had wrapped her arms around herself and said, "Goosebumps just came out of nowhere. Do you ever feel like you're being watched?"

Red Tornado had no understanding of how one could feel a mode of examination that had no physical component, nor the nature of goosebumps and how they could relate. He supposed that this could be more of Kathy S. from the Cafeteria's old wisdom that was beyond his comprehension, but before he could ask for clarification she had reached out and closed his hand around the seventy-five cents and told him to have a good day. Her face was still a ruddier shade than was normal, and she refrained from looking up at him, which indicated the conversation had come to its awkward conclusion.

When the dawn hours found him, Red Tornado felt as if he had only logged a fraction of what he routinely did on most nights, laying stationary in his non-essential bed as the pale morning light filled his room and deactivated his night vision. He resolved to stop by the labs by the day's end and have himself scanned for deviations in his vital functions.

There was nothing to be had from the Blue Beetle or the Green Arrow when Red Tornado checked his answering machine, although he did find that Batman had left him a brief message explaining that he had been kept busy the night before due to training a team of ragtag young heroes recently converted to the side of righteousness after an ill-advised attempt at mutating the Gotham populous. Red Tornado followed through with his now customary habit of calling Batman back, but as usual, his call went directly to voicemail by the light of day. He briefly contemplated leaving the whole story on the Bat Video Answer Phone, the easiest and most direct way to bring Batman into the meteor mystery, but decided against it at the last. It was undesirable to upset the quirks of one's colleagues. Rather than leaving his normal message, Red Tornado sat mute before his camera for a long moment, twenty seconds, before turning the device off.

He was not certain of whether his drives had just spontaneously frozen, but found himself looking to other items on his tasks list.

Red Tornado went about his preparations for the day ahead more affluently than he recalled doing in the past. He selected the clothes to incorporate into John Smith's hologram, selected the food items in his kitchen that were suitable for throwing out (as his kitchen was often kept stocked in preparation for potential visitors), and activated the mundane four seater vehicle in the garage to drive to the university in normal human fashion.

As he drove, he remotely renewed his connection to transmissions that were outside his range when he was at John Smith's place of residence, checking for the most recent data on the number of meteorites to have come into contact with the general area, and then abruptly pulled over to the side of the road. Red Tornado crunched the numbers once, and then again to make sure that there had been no error—but he knew, as he did so, there had not been. The numbers had risen by 79% since the first substantially size meteor landed on the island. Red Tornado concluded that the numbers were wildly unlikely.

His car remained stationary on the side of the road for several minutes before Red Tornado put it back into gear. He followed the road for another six miles before reaching the next exit and turning into the nearest metropolitan area that would be suitable for temporarily abandoning his car—not wanting to lose John Smith's vehicle and be obligated to re-start the process of building toward what he had been told was an exceptionally satisfying experience, when one completed the human endeavor of paying off one's car.

He had come to the conclusion that he would have to abandon it though, as well as make the executive decision that on this one occasion, John Smith would have to wave his responsibilities as a professor in favor of allowing Red Tornado to confer directly with the world's supposedly greatest detective.

Naturally, he would wait until only five minutes before class time to sending out notification emails to his students, as in keeping with the average practices of his fellow college professors.


	6. VI

Red Tornado had some difficulty discerning where the sudden initiative to track down his peer in crime fighting had come from, when he found himself looking down on the primarily sleet gray streets of Gotham City. The morning was still relatively new, and the sky was only just starting to transition from white to blue. The city itself appeared to be in stasis, cars still lined along the pavement from the night before and dew accumulated on windshields that showed green, yellow, and red in time with the changing of the street lights. He surmised that this neighborhood was not subject to the same hours as the average university professor.

Red Tornado alighted on the topmost level of an apartment building, unsure of whether it would be discourteous to utilize his wind jets and loudly fly over homes that were still at rest. Kathy S. from the Cafeteria had sometimes mentioned how disgruntling it was to have her daughter woken by careless street goers.

He had never before attempted to pinpoint Batman's secret identity, knowing even before Stuart Martha's guide to etiquette told him that it would be a breach of trust to do so. Likewise, his programming had also deemed it unnecessary, as Batman was a comrade in protecting society rather than a threat. Now Red Tornado processed the question of how he would go about finding him in the present, and how he would have to go about making amends if the only way to find Batman was to track down every suitable male candidate in the dark knight's cherished city.

Red Tornado pulled up what data he had on Batman's habits, and began to sort them into a profile. Batman's late hours indicated someone who did not necessarily need to rise early in the morning, like his own persona, and so Red Tornado promptly decided to exclude any nearby universities from his search. The shape of his body and the manner in which Batman handled himself ruled out any humans below the age of twenty-five, if not older, and the complexities of the tools he used in his work indicated a vast income and high level of education; his endurance, someone of high stamina and dedication...

Red Tornado was just noting to himself that it would be prudent to exclude the majority of the working class, whose lives would theoretically contain too many restricting variables to allow for Batman's habits, when his audio sensors picked up the distinct cocking of a gun. He turned, but only just in time to miss receiving a blast that took a considerable chunk of concrete out of the wall beside him. He noted that it was most likely meant for his head.

The being standing on the rooftop behind him was not about to give Red Tornado a moment to recover. He came at Red Tornado at a speed that did not seem in keeping with the average for humans, so that if Red Tornado had not possessed the gift of flight he might have found the assault challenging. As it was, he rose into the air easily—and loudly, although he now deemed his noise pollution no longer relevant given the greater threat—and swiftly assigned a potential attack sequence to the situation.

His attacker was featureless, possessing none of the hills and hallows that both nuanced and broadcasted the emotions that were so key to human existence. Red Tornado observed the blank expanse of the being's head, expression as unreadable as his own despite the grooves worked into the shape of eyes and mouth upon his own exterior, and then the other took aim with his exotic weapon.

Red Tornado was already in the process of wiping the air into a cyclone in time with his observations, when his assailant did the unthinkable: he shot Red Tornado down.

In the files that his creators had stored in Red Tornado's mechanical mind, not one ever touched on the idea that he was mortal. Much like a statue, it was assumed that he would eventually become outdated—obsolete once he could no longer make himself compatible with new technology—but never cease to exist. As Red Tornado hit the ground, hearing the small pieces of his circuitry that had become knocked loose by the blast rattle beside him, he realized for the first time that something had managed to pierce him—a feat that his programming assured him was not easily done. A sensation was there that he had never felt before, one that did not so much tingle like in the fleeting bliss of the Christmas Spirit that marked the only other time he had known his casting to tear, as it did gape at him in a blaring stretch of wrenching, disjointed gears.

In his head, red alarm flashes colored his vision as he tried to get to his feet. Wires that passed commands were disrupted though, limbs moving more slowly than they would under other conditions, and while none of this could cognitively distract Red Tornado, an advantage to his opponent was clear.

He didn't cry out when the faceless one closed his hand around the metal manufactured neck holding his head to his body. The only sound to be heard was the frustrated mechanical hiss of gears struggling to function when they were unable to do so, because his adversary made no commentary either. Without any of the fuss that Stuart Martha would classify as a "to do" or anymore recognition than Kathy S. from the Cafeteria would give to the trays she cleared from vacated tables, the faceless one drew back his free hand and lodged it effortlessly through Red Tornado's chest.

And before the ensuing rupture of his internal drives blew him apart, the faceless attacker's arm still inside him while oil from Red Tornado's innards visibly sputtered onto the fabric of his clothes, Red Tornado had one final thought, as the whirling circuits in his brain saw the red flashes in his sight steadily become all consuming.

Observation: It would have been wiser to have left Batman another message.


End file.
